The king of the skies

After my successful but short tour inside the Sandnes ship, my first encounter with a king crab and a cold beer, I couldn't resist my passion for flying machines, and decided to fly over the festival area and the surroundings.

Its a bit crazy to see houses built by the sea, just a meter or two above the ocean, to feel absolutely fragile in that small flying egg, hundred meters high.

But what I also felt was freedom, a huge endless freedom.

The freedom that I have felt only in a rapid boat sailing trough the norwegian fjords, or sitting on the top of a snowy valley in west Austria...or walking over one of the biggest glaciers in Iceland, or biking at midnight in Paris, sitting under the Londons Bridge and overlooking at the Big Ben, or walking to a dead volcano and climbing to the top in central Mexico.

This freedom that can only be compared to a chef's mind, picking the right produce, choosing the best way to make a recipe, being able to dress it as he wants, and present it just as his mind told him to.

The freedom to transform the basic into the most complex and amazing meal.

It was really nice to feel the freedom again.

The king of the seas

Its not a ship, its not a Captain; it's a crab, the King Crab.

Remember the sad food festival?

Well, I think I found some happiness after all, and it was at the right place, the Sandnes, a ship from the Rogaland District in Norway which docked in the harbour during the food festival, with the doors open to the public to admire it.

After three days of seeing it docked in the harbour, with a big cardboard saying "taste the king crab", and after three days of sad food, I decided to jump in and take a look, hoping for something more than the paella or the overpriced samples of norwegian food.

So more or less, this is what I found.

The red king crab was introduced into the artic coasts of Norway and Russia, but it became a plague. Despite that, there are very strict regulations that protects them, allowing only a certain number of tons. to be caught by a limited number of fishermen.
Now it's an expensive delicacy in most restaurants around the world, but here, where the salmon is cheaper than poultry, the king crab is not as expensive.

So here I got the chance to taste it for the first time, in a light butter sauce and asparagus, ah and of course, don't forget the bread and the butter. The taste? mild and sweet, that complemented perfectly with the sauce. To take it out of the shell of legs was extremely easy, and unlike other crabs, the actual meat was firm and with a delicate taste.
Of course, I was still hungry, but the experience was good, and spending a sunny afternoon on the deck of a huge ship, eating king crab and drinking a cold beer was priceless.